Libre Office still super slow in latest Mac OS

[JPRoza]

Hi,
I’ve been through a dozen topics regarding libre office writer being slow under mac os but those are all relatively old topics. Now in 2022 I’m still having trouble with libre office writer on my newest high end spec’d MacBook. It’s almost unusable as soon as I include pictures in a document. I really love the features of libre office writer and therefor wouldn’t want to switch to MS Word, but I feel like there is no other way. Has anyone come up with a solution yet?

[mariosv]

Please test with a clean profile, Menu/Help/Restart in Safe Mode

[gg767]

Indeed, LO used to be very slow on retina screens (macbook pros).

After playing with the settings, I managed to get a smooth experience in LO by enabling the “Preferences > View > Use Skia for all rendering” option. Keep the “Force Skia software rendering” disabled. Looking at the skia logs it went from RenderMethod raster to metal

Another option, as said by mariosv, is to reset all settings and profile by restarting in safe mode, it will also enable Skia for all rendering which makes things so much better.

It looks like we can thank version 7.3 and this conntributor for it:

• A rendering backend based on the Skia library is now used also on macOS [1] (Luboš Luňák, Collabora)

[bentpe]

I tried both methods mentioned above, and although it speeds things up a bit, LO is still extremely slow… I’m writing this while waiting for my 48 cells to finish pasting a formula, in safe mode and with skin rendering ^^

[Heero]

This did the trick for me! (disabling the “Force Skia software rendering” option (under “Preferences > View > Use Skia for all rendering"). (Recently it had become painfully slow to scroll through a .docx document; but now it’s all back to normal.) Thank you!

(I’m running LibreOffice 7.6.2.1 and OS 14.1.1)

[Arthur200000]

My LibreOffice install (upgraded from an old version, I think) was not using Skia by default. It’s good that we finally have something that properly uses the hardware on my pathetic core m3.

Maybe someone from LibreOffice can make sure to change the setting on upgrades? Should even I open a ticket just for that…?

[EarnestAl]

The setting is in your user profile which is not overwritten during upgrade, see LibreOffice user profile - The Document Foundation Wiki

[mariosv]

I don’t know in Mac, but on Windows, sometimes, updating the graphics drivers, directly from the vendor, solves compatibility issues, with skya or opencl.

[jrogov]

@gg767 seems to be completely correct but it was a bit different for me.

I’ve had Skia enabled for rendering, yet the whole experience was slow. What’s more is that logs showed RenderMethod: raster. Unchecking and checking the same toggle did switch it to RenderMethod: metal and whole experience improved a lot: no stuttering and lagging rendering so far.

In summary:

1. Untoggle anything Skia related in Preferences > View > Use Skia for all rendering of LibreOffice settings in case it’s toggled
2. Restart LibreOffice
3. Toggle “Use Skia for all rendering” back, without touching the “Force Skia software rendering”
4. Restart LibreOffice
5. That should fix it.